UNITAR Global E-Waste "Monitor" 2024: Better, but still kinda cringy?

I have yet to read more than the Executive Summary and Table of Contents of the new UNEP Global E-Waste Monitor report, but I can already see that it's being mis-reported.  The "hook" is an emergency, that only 22.3% of e-waste is "documented", and the rest (the Executive Summary implies), is presumed to be "improperly" managed or "lost" to the so-called "informal sector".

Readers may remember this blog previously defined "informal sector" as "a white person didn't enter it into a spreadsheet"... in response to the "Criminal Negligence" 2015 Report.

UNITAR (another UN agency) describes the reports findings as follows:

"Meanwhile, less than one quarter (22.3%) of the year’s e-waste mass was documented as having been properly collected and recycled in 2022, leaving US $62 billion worth of recoverable natural resources unaccounted for and increasing pollution risks to communities worldwide. "

The "five fold growth" in "e-waste" is describing worldwide generation, not just wealthy countries.  This raises questions about the measurement of "undocumented" used electronics... but lets list a few obvious premises.

1.  The size of electronics PER CAPITA is declining due to the miniaturization effect.  In 1992 it peaked because we needed a desk phone, an answering machine, a fax machine, a camera, a radio, etc.... all of which now fit inside the smart phone in my front pocket.  

2. The export market, which the previous 2015 UNEP Report described as "primitive", is mostly for reuse.  So if there was less e-waste generated in the past compared to the future, that can only be explained by the continuous reuse of past devices which continue to be reused and maintained in places like Ghana, Nigeria, Angola, etc.  

3. The UNEP reports conflate the end of first consumer use with "waste generated", as if reuse and repair, if not "documented", is in the "ewaste" volume assesssed.  That would mean that if a white person owns a TV for ten years, and it's purchased and reused by an African for another 40 years, that the "waste" is counted twice - the first time it was "generated" and the actual "end of life" of the TV.

Photo of TV Repairman Ibrahim Alhassan in Savelugu, Ghana, who we introduced to author Adam Minter, who wrote about Ibrahim in the seminal reuse non-fiction book "Secondhand: Travels in the New Global Garage Sale".  Ibrahim was repairing a 1970 Japanese CRT television, or rather improving it by addint a remote control function absent in the original knob-tuned TV.  This TV certainly would have been destroyed by "Big Shred" in Europe decades ago... but hard to describe the African's continuous use and extended life as "primitive"... unless you are a wee bit racially-profilly.

Swordfish ë, Part 1: How Modest Mentors Fish for Agents of Conscience, Surrounded by Tilapia

 

Sunrise in Vermont

We had the pleasure of connecting with Agabas Ayudor a few months ago, all thanks to a wonderful activist from the UK who reached out to me. It's funny how these connections form—perhaps Adam Minter wrote about me, or maybe it was the influence of this blog. This blog, while long-winded and dense, serves as a public record that orbits a solar system not centered around privileged individuals obsessed with egos and real estate values. Instead, it focuses on the best and brightest minds emerging from the Tech Sector in rapidly developing "LDC" Emerging Markets.

Within this vast landscape, there exists a rare breed—the 1 in 1,000 who discerns the manipulation of collective guilt management by entities like the Anti Gray Market Alliance/Planned Obsolescence, Big Shred, and the Charitable Industrial Complex. I'd even throw in a few foreign governments seeking to corral non-OECD markets using Basel Convention rules (we might need a catchy nickname for that). These discerning individuals, the "Swordfish," possess the brilliance or transboundary knowledge to comprehend the intricate topics discussed in this blog.

What sets the Swordfish apart is their potential to shape the future positively. Writing for an audience that values conscience over sheer numbers allows for a more profound impact on the environmental solar system. Sometimes, it's tempting to focus on gaining thousands of followers, but the real influence lies in resonating with agents of conscience.

BusinessInsider: New Zealand Company Extracts Gold from PC Boards Using Microbes (and...)

This Business Insider video on gold recycling just came out on Youtube.

I haven't even finished watching it yet, because the opening minute uses footage of African city junkyards to repeat perposterous claims that African are using a toxic leachate chemical process to extract gold from circuit boards.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4yGPm1U7U6s

Look, if you are claiming to make a engineering or scientific breakthrough, don't start with a blatantly false and discredited claim.  I've been visiting African scrapyards for years.

The gold bearing printed-circuit boards that come from hand-demanufacture and disassembly (an honorable process, superior to Western "Big Shred" machines designed to avoid labor) are sorted by type and either a) reused in ubiquitous repair shops in Africa, or b) sold to Chinese buyers who harvest integrated chips from the boards for remanufacturing (e.g. into lower scale toys and appliances).

The whole "acid bath" claim was bogus since Guiyu reporting in 2002.  The claims made about Agbogbloshie and other African dumps (that they import EU and USA electronics for scrap, rather than collect from generators in African cities after decades of re-use) were disproven by multiple research papers over the past 10 years.

<iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/4yGPm1U7U6s" title="YouTube video player" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen></iframe>

@BusinessInsider is ordinarily a great journalism organization, and the rest of the story may be quite interesting aside from the postulation that white people have better processes. 

Procurement to the Rescue of the Right To Repair 2: Chess Game To Future-Proof

While I'm a big supporter of the Right To Repair legislation, a friend in an influential position at DEP (former hire, elevated to my former position) asked the Zoom group whether Right to Repair Legislation should be their top priority.

Fair Use Review

I'm always on my guard against "Group-Think".  Here were 15-20 proponents of reuse, actively engaged in DEFENSE of repair.  What did we all have in common, and how could common thought become a weakness?

In a tweet later, @WR3A (World Reuse, Repair and Recycling Association, my Twitter handle created 12 years ago) I used the words "my one qualm with #RightToRepair [as a movement] is that it is backward oriented. Trying to take back too many chess moves by planned obsolescence which were already played [successfully, by OEMs]... Each new device developed or sold is the next chess game. I recommend government procurement contracts as the opening move."

Ironically, the Right to Repair twitter advocate who responded (a friendly fire incident, if I offended) responded in a quote tweet... "Made the move to influence government buying at least 6 years ago. Have the conference badges to prove it. If only it were that easy. OEMs have made sure that the GSA won't even consider buying used equipment. If only it were that easy..." 

[as if I'd dispute it? I've got them going back to 1990]

My point about Procurement isn't about government buying used equipment. It is about strategically wording FTC-backed warranty language on things the government hasn't even purchased yet. Backward Oriented, Exhibit A?

Procurement to the Rescue of the Right To Repair

 I've provided several written and oral testimony on behalf of "Right To Repair" Laws in several states. What prepares me for the discussion is over 3 decades of interest in Warranty Law, Planned Obsolescence, Trademark and Patent Law.

Here's the thing. Most of the testimony in favor of Right To Repair is based on past Planned Obsolescence techniques. Most of the testimony AGAINST Right to Repair is based on scary things that might occur in the future, if OEMs are forced to stop blocking independents (who according to OEM TV ads are far more likely to stalk you than OEM repair shops).

But the VERY SCARY future is based on what Planned Obsolescence has in mind. 

Free Online Slide Presentation By "Secondhand" Author Adam Minter (Courtesy Massachusetts DEP)

Massachusetts DEP held a second Reuse & Reduce Workshop online this month. Dozens of state and local and institutional recycling officials were invited to watch a 40 minute presentation by Adam Minter, author of Secondhand: Travels in the New Global Garage Sale.

The 45 minute presentation is now posted online, no charge. It's one of his best, thanks in large part to Star Wars references* on repair in other galaxies. But it's special to me for his nods to Chendiba Enterprises, Good Point Recycling, and WR3A.

Adam starts out by telling the truth about Guiyu, China (predicted here in our 2008 ("Big Secret Factories"), 2009 and 2010 critique of CBS 60 Minutes "Wasteland"), and 2011 blog tipping the hat to TechTravels (which showed the chip reuse I was shown in 2005's trip to Asia with Craig Lorch).

He ends by telling the truth about Accra's slum and scrapyard, Abogbloshie, in Ghana. And the third party interviews and experts he relies on are Chinese and African. And the math adds up, it does not completely fail prima facia the way Greenpeace and BAN.org's "80%" math did.

Adam Minter's photo of technician repairing a screen in an Accra importers repair shop. #righttorepair

Discard Something Today: Day One "Perishable Goods"

After reading author Adam Minter's Secondhand: Travels In the New Global Garage Sale, I'm confronted with my September 2019 dilemma.

Adam followed Good Point Recycling and one of our many overseas reuse partners, Chendiba Enterprises. And he corrected the abismal reporting on Agbogbloshie, to boot. He understood, and translated, my furious defense of geeks of color, accused of being "waste tourists" because "big shred", through its donations to NGO Basel Action Network,  had more clout with reporters than the accused.

But Adam's book revolves around the End... After Second-hand, there may be a third-hand. Rarely, a fourth-hand vintage collectible. He is fair in defending and supporting the reuse market. But the Secondhand Market is fundamentally tied to our parents death, and the cleanout of their homes one day, beit in Japan, Tucson, India, or Middlebury, Vermont.


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Facultat d'Informàtica de Barcelona Presentation: Influencing Environmental Impact of Marketplace with "Zeroknowledge"

A gigantic crane is swinging overhead, no doubt carrying some new material for the erection of another spire atop the Sagrada Familia Basilica, here in Barcelona.

It's a distraction from this week's challenge. How to explain to a group of Catalan University Professors how markets for used devices work, and how they can be measured without influencing the way they move. The title of our talk is "ZeroKnowledge". It is about the so-called "Observer Effect" in scientific study, and in particular, how data collection in "e-waste", "e-scrap", or "surplus property" can affect the policies and contracts and trade that add up to the actual outcome.

In my first chart, above, we can recognize the so-called "Circular Economy", but also the gravitational shortcuts of efficiency. When a ton does not "show up" to meet the scrap shredder/refiner/urban miner's prediction (and the hours of use of their shredding machine suffers), you cannot state that the material is "lost". It probably went into a more efficient gravitational orbit of "reuse". And countries which are good at reusing and repairing devices also tend not to throw copper away.  We may object to the way they extract the copper when the device is eventually discarded after many more years of use, but the calculation of environmental cost must be honest about the fact that brand new device production to meet the demand in emerging markets is a far worse carbon scenario. The two choices are, let them reuse and repair, or keep them in the dark (nighttime in "project eden").

But I digress. Today's talk is not about what the Waste/Mineral Policy should be, but about how the study, monitoring, regulation, certification, blockchain tracking, warranty registration, and GPS tracking devices will spin it, and to what ends.




Above are 3 slides we worked on with the Barcelona EReuse.org group.

They are working with us and a larger OBADA group to get Catalonian computer procurement officials to put into the RFP for purchase of new laptops a "blockchain" which would allow a surplus property officer at end of life to insert a USB key, find the blockchain, wipe the drive, and "inflate" a "spare tire license" such as Chromium or Linux.  The Spanish government would pay $1 per PC for "pre-wiping", which would be save $5 per HD wiping fees, and allow the PCs to be sold directly through surplus property auctions.

(longtime readers will recognize this "spare tire licence" from my first business in 2001).